A Miracle

Now I personally know what one looks like. After a nice Sunday evening concert at church, we started for home as light rain began, which within minutes turned to hail and high winds tearing tree limbs and popping street lights, alarming us enough to detour into a shopping center parking lot away from electric lines to wait out the storm. We had no clue a tornado had been developing and was deciding to take its unpredictable path to coincide with ours, or that the shopping center at Preston/Royal where we parked was going to undergo terrible destruction. There was nothing to do as it arrived but hang on and pray. It worked. These photos were taken the next morning by Dallas Morning News and D Magazine staff photographers and Instagrammers at the location where we experienced a few minutes I hope never to do again.

And yet we were unscathed. The windows of our car held against a battering by flying missiles, and we were actually able to drive home that night, through blocked roads and downed wires. The car was totaled, but I have to credit it (a Lexus GX460) with superior service to us.

Our experience was of little consequence compared to what we’ve since seen in photos of nearby home destruction. And no one lost their life anywhere along the paths of the several tornadoes that touched down in and around Dallas Sunday night. You can’t call that anything but a miracle.